


stars go waltzing out

by FreshBrains



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Amnesia, Anal Sex, Floor Sex, Hurt/Comfort, Kissing, M/M, POV Bucky Barnes, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-02
Updated: 2014-05-02
Packaged: 2018-01-21 16:38:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1557065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FreshBrains/pseuds/FreshBrains
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Who am I?</i>
</p><p> </p><p>  <i>Who are you?</i></p><p> </p><p>  <i>Where am I?</i></p><p> </p><p>It scared him when he asked himself those questions.  It scared him shitless, because sometimes he didn’t know how to answer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	stars go waltzing out

Steve always asks him three questions when he comes to, lying in a puddle of his own piss and shaking like a leaf at the foot of Steve’s bed where he always ends up.

_Do you know who you are?_

_Do you know who I am?_

_Do you know where you are?_

And the answers are always the same.

_My name is James Buchanan Barnes._

_You’re Steve Rogers, my best friend._

_I am in hell._

“I’ll bring you back, Buck,” Steve always whispers, lips grazing Bucky’s sweaty hair, strong arms wrapped around his body. 

Bucky remembers the restraints and jackets they used to put him in and how different they were from Steve’s yielding embrace.  His hands scrabble on Steve’s arm, neck, and shoulders, trying to pull him closer, trying to crawl so deep inside his friend that he’ll never go back to the bad time again.

“I don’t want you in there with me,” Bucky answers, throat hot and dry.  And then Steve looks up at the ceiling, eyes glassy and tired, like he was in some kind of separate hell, far away from Bucky and always, always reaching for him.

*

He likes watching TV.  They were just starting to come out when he went to war but he never imagined they’d be in color like at the movies—it was too much for one room, for one home.  He thought he’d never get used to the rapid sounds and pictures, but soon enough he was addicted just like everyone else.  He found that Sam liked science fiction shows and Natasha liked documentaries.  Steve didn’t watch much TV.

Bucky likes the shows for children.  They're full of bright colors and stupid noises, talking animals like in a Walt Disney picture, and so many jokes that he didn’t understand.  Nothing made sense when he turned on TV shows about talking sponges who lived under the ocean or a kid with a princess friend who lived in a candy palace.  The little drawn-out characters used gadgets he wasn’t familiar with, spoke in slang he didn’t know, and referenced films and music he never heard of.

He didn’t try to understand it.  He didn’t need to.  All he had to do was watch and trust that it was safe.

Bucky was tired of trying to understand.

*

“Did Tony recommend me?”  Dr. Banner pushed his eyeglasses up further on his nose, grimacing a little.  Between him and Stark, Bucky preferred Dr. Banner.  “I’m not really this sort of doctor.  He still doesn’t really understand that.”

Bucky sat on the edge of the armchair in Tony and Ms. Potts’ living room, the distant noise of Tony working at something streaming up from the basement.  “He said you were a good listener.”

Dr. Banner folded his hands in his lap.  He looked too young to have grey around his temples.  “Do you need a good listener?”

Bucky swallowed hard.  He was used to thinking hard before speaking.  “I’m not sure.”

“What makes me a better listener than Cap?  He seems like a pretty astute guy.”

He was.  Steve was perfect.  He’d always been perfect, from the minute Bucky met him as a scrawny chicken-legged little thing scrapping with a bully to when he shook Bucky by the shoulders and hissed _I’m with you till the end of the line_.  Steve could never be anything other than perfect because Bucky was so fucked up and Steve was always the exact opposite.  “Steve doesn’t need this.”

Dr. Banner exhaled, sitting back in his chair.  He was also the type of man to think carefully before he spoke.  “I don’t think Steve would appreciate you keeping things from him.  He worries about you.”

Annoyance prickled the back of Bucky’s neck.  “He’s not my pop.  I don’t need him to hold my hand.”  He couldn’t tell Steve the things that were clawing their way out of his throat— _I’ve killed people, I’ve killed so many people, I’ve blown their skulls apart, I’ve sliced them open, I’m a machine, I’m a robot, I’m a monster, a monster, a monster._

“Sure.  You’re a grown man.  But,” Dr. Banner said, steepling his fingers in a gesture that clearly said _I’m about to make an important point_ , “if I recall popular Stark Tower lore correctly, you held Steve’s hand quite a bit back when he was the one who fell on his ass a lot.”

There would always be a part of Bucky that wanted to use violence when he felt cornered—it would always be there, hiding somewhere deep, and it would always flare up whenever someone made him think about when he and Steve were just stupid kids playing at war.  But he was getting better at pushing it down.  “It’s different now.  He was sick, you know?  He was…small.  People hurt him.”

Dr. Banner tapped his pen against his clipboard, where Bucky noticed he hadn’t written one word down.  “ _They_ made you sick, Mr. Barnes.  They took you apart.”

“Are you putting me back together again?”  Bucky didn’t mean to lean forward, using his body to intimidate the doctor.  But Dr. Banner just leaned back, unfazed.

“I’ll try to help.  So will Steve and Natasha and the rest of the team.  But in the end you’ll have to do that yourself.”

That was the answer Bucky was afraid of.

*

Bucky lived with Steve, but he spent time all over the place.  Steve was always there by his side whenever they went to Stark Tower so Tony and Bruce could poke and prod at him a little more, trying to find ways to slow down the reel of mixed-up images that was his mind.

Natasha had a little apartment (“ _Many_ little apartments,” she insisted with a half-smile, “this is just the one I invite people to”) with a nice old sofa and an old radio she liked to tinker with before she went to bed.  It was the sort of hole-in-the-wall place that reminded Bucky of sweet girls, nice girls, girls he’d wait for in the parlor while they powdered their faces.  Bucky knew there were girls before but they were all a blur to him.

Clint was there most of the time, and Bucky liked him a lot.  He didn’t push like the scientists did and sometimes he took off his hearing aid to have a moment to himself, and then Bucky would consider removing the foreign prosthesis Tony Stark fitted for him.  He never went through with it, but it was a nice thought.

*

“You can come up here,” Steve said into the dark one night.  Bucky sat against the baseboard of the bed, propped against the antique wood like a rag doll.  Whenever he dozed off, he’d jerk awake before he hit the carpet.

“’m fine,” he mumbled, facing the doorway.  _Windows shut, closets clear.  Keep an eye on the hall and front door._   “Go back to sleep.”

Steve sighed and shuffled for the bedside lamp.  A halo of light spilled around the room, darkening the hallway further, and Bucky flinched.  “Buck.  I don’t need you to keep watch.  Agent Carter’s a smart lady, nobody is getting in here.”

“Just let me, okay?”  Bucky could never be harsh with Steve, but sometimes his voice rose a bit like a scolding, frantic mother.  They usually found it funny until it wasn’t.

“Can you at least come up here?  Get off the floor.”

After a few minutes of silence, Steve turned off the light, curling back into bed.  Bucky waited a few more minutes, checked the windows again, and crawled into bed next to Steve.

When he wakes up, he feels Steve’s breath against the back of his neck, his arm around his waist, and the clearheaded feeling of sleep with no dreams.  And then he feels ashamed, because someone could’ve come in and killed him, killed Steve, and it would’ve been all Bucky’s fault.

*

“Get in, James, we’re going for a ride.”  Natasha always called him that.  Never Sarge, never Buck. Just James. 

Bucky liked riding in the car with Natasha.  After the last the time HYDRA wiped him, he was afraid of cars, didn’t like the noise of the engines.  He hated boats, airplanes, helicopters, even tall buildings, but he still didn’t remember why.  It helped that Natalia was a skilled driver—she glided along the road like butter.

_Her name is Natasha.  Who is Natalia?_

“Where are we going?”

“Nowhere special,” Natasha said, flipping her dark sunglasses over her eyes.  “It’s a nice day.  We’ll drive with the top down.”

“But my hair,” Bucky said dryly, rolling his eyes.  Bucky hated having long hair but he refused to cut it.  Mostly because that involved sitting still in a chair with sharp objects around his head, and he wasn’t so much about that kind of life anymore.  “Are we going to have a heart-to-heart?”

“Do you need one?”  Bucky noticed for the first time how Natasha barely moved her mouth when she spoke, like she was always telling a secret.

“Why is it that you all answer questions in a question?”

Natasha shrugged, the wind blowing through her red hair.  “Does it bother you?”

Bucky didn’t respond.  They drove by the canyon and Bucky’s stomach swooped.  He hoped he wouldn’t slide back while he was out with Natasha—she knew what it was like.  He didn’t need to do that to her.  “I don’t need a heart-to-heart.  I need a drink.”

“Good luck with that.”  She had the serum in her, too.  All the vices they once had didn’t work anymore.  Bucky was never a big drinker anyways—when they were kids, Steve could only handle half a beer or so before he was on the floor, and he needed Bucky there to pick him back up.

Bucky liked Natasha, but sometimes it felt like he was with a sister.  A twin sister, one who knew too much about him, who was much too close to him to ever be considered a friend.

*

_Who am I?_

_Who are you?_

_Where am I?_

It scared him when he asked himself those questions.  It scared him shitless, because sometimes he didn’t know how to answer.

*

He kissed Steve once before the war, before the serum, when they were a couple of malnourished skinny poor kids with bruises on their elbows and scars on their knuckles, getting in and out of fights together.  It was one kiss, sloppy and hazy in the alleyway behind their apartment, Steve’s mouth soft and warm under his.  Bucky froze in the middle of the kiss, thinking he ruined everything— _it’s over, it’s over, he’ll never speak to me again_.

Instead, Steve made an impatient noise against Bucky’s lips, twined his arms around Bucky’s neck, and said, “Why’d you stop?”

Bucky kissed him again, harder, and wondered how he could ever stop.

The next day, he got his letter.

*

He wakes up one morning on a lakeside dock, hair matted and rank with fresh water, wearing nothing but a pair of Steve’s boxers.  He remembers crawling in bed next to Steve, then swimming hard, pulling someone up, leaving their body on the shore. 

_End…line._

“You alright?”

Bucky jerks up, ready to draw the non-existent knife from his non-existent boot, and sees Steve sitting at the edge of the dock, feet dangling in the water.  He doesn’t look much better—bed hair, sleep pants, his tennis shoes sitting next to him.  Before he can ask, Bucky waves his hand and flops back on the dock.  “I’m James Buchanan Barnes, you’re Steve Rogers.”

“And you’re in hell,” Steve says, looking off into the lake where the morning sun hits the water.

Bucky closes his eyes and breathes in the dirty-cool smell of the water, a smell that comforted him, no matter how much of a city kid he used to be.  “I’m getting out,” he says.

*

End of the line, end of the line.

Bucky wondered if the end was near.

*

He jolts up to the sound of gunfire one night and has Steve on the floor in two seconds, Bucky’s own body crouched over Steve’s like a shield.  His hair dangles in Steve’s eyes and Steve looks up at him, eyes wide but face calm, like he’s waiting to see what Bucky will do.

“Buck,” Steve says carefully, quiet in the dark, “It was a car backfiring.  From down the street.  Just a car.”  His hands grasp Bucky’s forearms, but Bucky can only feel one of them.

“I think I’d die for you,” Bucky whispers, and doesn’t move, looking down at Steve, who doesn’t have an age anymore—one hundred, thirty, twenty, twelve, ninety.  Everything about him is a contradiction, from his baby boy smile to his charming eyes to the way he looks like he’s seen the entire world fall around him.

Bucky is still trying to understand Steve, so he plants his hands on the wood floor at either side of Steve’s head, leans down, and kisses him firmly.  A part of him flashes back to that first kiss— _it’s over, it’s over_ —but Steve doesn’t give him time to second-guess. Instead, he places his hands on Bucky’s hips, squeezes, and kisses him harder.

They never make it back to the bed.  Bucky lets Steve roll their bodies over so Steve is the one on top with his broad shoulders and strong legs.  “Do you know who you are?”

Bucky throws his arms out to the side like an angel, like someone opening their wings for the first time, and lets Steve move him where he wants him.  “My name is James Buchanan Barnes.”

Steve smiles as he kisses Bucky; Bucky can’t see it in the dark but can feel it against his lips.  When Steve slides his tongue against Bucky’s lips, Bucky opens up for him, and a sound comes from his chest that reminds him of Natasha, of the days before the war, of the taste of cognac.  They scramble with their shorts and tee shirts, shedding the sleep-warm clothes, until their naked bodies are pressed together against the cold floor.

“Do you know who I am?”  Steve’s hands wander all over Bucky’s body—down the flanks of thighs, smooth around his waist, touching his stomach and hips and neck, like he can’t get enough.  Bucky knows he has scars but Steve doesn’t linger on them.

“You’re Steve Rogers,” Bucky says, breath thick and heavy as Steve wraps a hand around his cock.  He spreads his legs, giving Steve room.  "My best friend."

Steve reaches into the bedside table drawer for something and Bucky might now know much but he knows what’s going to happen and he’s never wanted anything so much before.  Steve leans down for another kiss, tender this time, soft.  “Do you know where you are?”

Bucky doesn’t answer for a long time, not until Steve’s fingers have stretched him out slow and careful and just on the right side of painful, pulling noises out of Bucky that should be embarrassing but aren’t.  Not with Steve.  He doesn’t answer until Steve slides inside of him, hot and thick, slow and perfect and _Steve_.

“Where are you, Buck?”  Steve asks again, twisting his hands in Bucky’s hair as he thrusts, their bodies rocking against the hard floor.

Bucky winds his arms around Steve, clinging to him, taking everything Steve can give.  “I’m right where I want to be.”

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Sylvia Plath's "Mad Girl's Love Song."


End file.
